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Biomedicine in museums

Separating biomedical artefacts from their supporting contexts

A propos things that do not talk—last week Herwig Turk and Paulo Pereira (see earlier post here) opened an exhibition in Maribor, Slovenia:

The exhibit has been created within the framework of their blindspot-project, an interdisciplinary art-research project about perception, which they are continuously developing together with Günter Stöger, Beatriz Cantinho and Patrícia Almeida:

The project aims at investigating perception in a broad and global sense, as well as its circumstances, its determinants, and its contingencies. The proceedings in the laboratories for research in vision sciences are translated into different settings, thereby creating a meta-language that crosses the traditional boundaries between science and art. At the same time, a new heterotopic space for experimentation is created where objects, gestures, and language acquire new dimensions having been separated from their supporting contexts. The approach used by the authors of blindspot adopts the formal structure of a research project. The starting point is the hypothesis that science represents an imperfect means whereby perception is used as a privileged means to assess reality (“an improved means to an unimproved end”) (Thoreau, 1854). (my underline)

After decades of Contextualisation this aim—separating objects from their supporting contexts—feels fresh.

The exhibition will be on display until 19 March. Time for a trip to Slovenia!

Thomas Söderqvist

Author Thomas Söderqvist

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